HEPHTALITEWhite Huns

Hephthalites are among the ancestors of modern-day Pashtuns. According to the academic Yu. V. Gankovsky,“[The Pashtuns began as a] union of largely East-Iranian tribes
which became the initial ethnic stratum of the Pashtun ethnogenesis,
dates from the middle of the first millennium CE and is connected with
the dissolution of the Epthalite (White Huns) confederacy. [...] Of the
contribution of the Epthalites (White Huns) to the ethnogenesis of the
Pashtuns we find evidence in the ethnonym of the largest of the Pashtun
tribe unions, the Abdali (Durrani after 1747) associated with the ethnic
name of the Epthalites — Abdal. The Siah-posh, the Kafirs (Nuristanis)
of the Hindu Kush, called all Pashtuns by a general name of Abdal still
at the beginning of the 19th century.[Gankovsky, Yu. V., et al. A History of Afghanistan, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1982, pg 382] ”

Some Hephthalite tribes also participated in the formation of Johals, as well as Turkmens and Uzbeks.

The Hephthalites were a Central Asian nomadic confederation of the AD 5th-6th centuries whose precise origins and composition remain obscure. According to Chinese chronicles, they were originally a tribe living to the north of the Great Wall and were known as Hoa or Hoa-tun.[1] Elsewhere they were called White Huns, known to the Greeks as Hephthalite and the Indians as the Sveta Huns/Turukshas.[2] It is likely that they communicated in an East Iranian language

Although the Hephtalite empire was known in China as Yanda (嚈噠),
Chinese chroniclers recognized this designated the leaders of the
empire. The same sources document that the main tribe called themselves Uar (滑).[5] The modern Chinese variation Yanda has been given various Latinised renderings such as "Yeda", although the more archaic Korean pronunciation "Yeoptal" 엽달 is more compatible with the Greek Hephthal and is certainly a more archaic form.

According to B.A. Litvinsky, the names of the Hephtalite rulers used in the Shahnameh are Iranian.[6] According to Xavier Tremblay, one of the Hephthalite rulers was named Khingila, which has the same root as the Sogdian word xnγr and the Wakhi word xiŋgār, meaning "sword". The name Mihirakula is thought to be derived from Mithra-kula which is Iranian for "Relier upon Mithra", and Toramāna is also considered to have an Iranian origin. Accordingly, in Sanskrit, "Mihirakula" would mean from the "Kul (family or race) of Mihir (Mithra or Sun)". Janos Harmatta gives the translation "Mithra's Begotten" and also supports the Iranian theory.[7]

There are several theories regarding the origins of the White Huns, with the "Turkic"[8][9] and "Indo-European"[10][11][12] theories being the most prominent.

For many years, scholars suggested that they were of Turkic stock,[9] and it seems likely that at least some groups amongst the Hephthalites were Turkic-speakers.[8] In 1959, Kazuo Enoki proposed that they were probably East Indo-Iranians as some sources indicated that they were originally from Tokharestan, which is known to have been inhabited by Indo-Iranian people in antiquity.[3]
Richard Frye is cautiously accepting of Enoki's hypothesis, while at
the same time stressing that the Hephthalites "were probably a mixed
horde".[13] More recently Xavier Tremblay's
detailed examination of surviving Hephthalite personal names has
indicated that Enoki's hypothesis that they were East Iranian may well
be correct, but the matter remains unresolved in academic circles.[4]

According to the Encyclopaedia Iranica and Encyclopaedia of Islam, the Hephthalites possibly originated in northeastern Iran and northwestern India.[14][15] They apparently had no direct connection with the European Huns,
but may have been causally related with their movement. It is
noteworthy that the tribes in question deliberately called themselves Huns in order to frighten their enemies.[16]

Some White Huns may have been a prominent tribe or clan of the Chionites. According to Richard Nelson Frye:

"Just as later nomadic
empires were confederations of many peoples, we may tentatively propose
that the ruling groups of these invaders were, or at least included,
Turkic-speaking tribesmen from the east and north. Although most
probably the bulk of the people in the confederation of Chionites and
then Hephtalites spoke an Iranian language"..."this was the last time in
the history of Central Asia that Iranian-speaking nomads played any
role; hereafter all nomads would speak Turkic languages."

The 6th-century Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea (Book I. ch. 3), related them to the Huns in Europe:

The Ephthalitae Huns, who are called White Huns [...] The Ephthalitae
are of the stock of the Huns in fact as well as in name, however they
do not mingle with any of the Huns known to us, for they occupy a land
neither adjoining nor even very near to them; but their territory lies
immediately to the north of Persia [...] They are not nomads like the
other Hunnic peoples, but for a long period have been established in a
goodly land.[18]

Scholars believe that the name Hun is used to denote very
different nomadic confederations. Ancient Chinese chroniclers, as well
as Procopius, wrote various theories about the origins of the people:

They were descendants of the Yuezhi or Tocharian tribes who remained behind after the rest of the people fled the Xiongnu;

They were first mentioned by the Chinese, who described them as living in Dzungaria around AD 125.
Chinese chronicles state that they were originally a tribe of the
Yuezhi, living to the north of the Great Wall, and subject to the Rouran (Jwen-Jwen), as were some Turkic peoples at the time. Their original name was Hoa or Hoa-tun; subsequently they named themselves Ye-tha-i-li-to (厌带夷栗陁, or more briefly Ye-tha 嚈噠),[19] after their royal family, which descended from one of the five Yuezhi families which also included the Kushan.

They displaced the Scythians and conquered Sogdiana and Khorasan before AD 425. After that, they crossed the Syr Darya (Jaxartes) River and invaded Persia. In Persia, they were initially held off by Bahram Gur but around AD 483–85, they succeeded in making Persia a tributary state. After a series of wars in the period AD 503-513, they were driven out of Persia and completely defeated in AD 557 by Khosru I. Their polity thereafter came under the Göktürks.

Hephthalite ruler.
The Hephtalites also invaded the regions of present-day
Afghanistan and Pakistan, continuing deep into Northern India and succeeded in extending their domain to include the Western India. They threatened the Gupta empire but were eventually driven out of India in 528 by a Hindu coalition.[1]

Procopius claims that the White Huns lived in a prosperous territory,
and that they were the only Huns with fair complexions. According to
him, they did not live as nomads, did acknowledge a single king,
observed a well-regulated constitution, and behaved justly towards
neighboring states. He also describes the burial of their nobles in tumuli, accompanied by their closest associates. This practice contrasts with evidence of cremation among the Chionites in Ammianus
and with remains found by excavators of the European Huns and remains
in some deposits ascribed to the Chionites in Central Asia. Scholars
believe that the Hephthalites constituted a second "Hunnish" wave who
entered Bactria early in the fifth century AD, and who seem to have driven the Kidarites into Gandhara.[15]

Newly-discovered ancient writings found in Afghanistan reveal that the Middle Iranian Bactrian language written in Greek script
was not brought there by the Hephthalites, but was already present from
Kushan times as the traditional language of administration in this
region. There is also evidence of the use of a Turkic language under the
White Huns. The Bactrian documents also attest several Turkic royal
titles (such as Khagan),
indicating an important influence of Turkic people on White Huns,
although these could also be explained by later Turkic infiltration
south of the Oxus.[15]

According to Simokattes, they were Chionites who united under the Hephthalites as the "(Wusun) vultures descended on the people" around AD 460.

Main article: Hunas
In the northwest of the Indian subcontinent, the Hephtalites were not
distinguished from their immediate Chionite predecessors and are known
by the same name as Huna (Sanskrit: Sveta-Hūna, White Huns). The Huna had already established themselves in Afghanistan and the modern North-West Frontier Province of present day Pakistan by the first half of the fifth century, and the Gupta emperor Skandagupta had repelled a Hūna invasion in 455 before the Hephthalite clan came along.

The Hephthalites with their capital at Bamiyan
continued the pressure on ancient India's northwest frontier and broke
east by the end of the fifth century, hastening the disintegration of
the Gupta Empire. They made their capital at the city of Sakala, modern Sialkot in Pakistan, under their Emperor Mihirakula.

After the sixth century, little is recorded in ancient India about
the Hephthalites, and what happened to them is unclear. Some historians
surmise that the remaining Hephthalites were assimilated into the
population of northwest India and Pakistan.

“
The last Hephthalite King Yudhishthira ruled until about 670 , when he was replacd by the Turk Shahi dynasty .[25]
”
Hephthalites are among the ancestors of modern-day Pashtuns. According to the academic Yu. V. Gankovsky,

“
[The Pashtuns began as a] union of largely East-Iranian tribes which became the initial ethnic stratum of the Pashtun ethnogenesis,
dates from the middle of the first millennium CE and is connected with
the dissolution of the Epthalite (White Huns) confederacy. [...] Of the
contribution of the Epthalites (White Huns) to the ethnogenesis of the
Pashtuns we find evidence in the ethnonym of the largest of the Pashtun tribe unions, the Abdali (Durrani after 1747) associated with the ethnic name of the Epthalites — Abdal. The Siah-posh, the Kafirs (Nuristanis) of the Hindu Kush, called all Pashtuns by a general name of Abdal still at the beginning of the 19th century.[26]
”
Some Hephthalite tribes also participated in the formation of Johals, as well as Turkmens and Uzbeks.

The subject of our research is a people of many names
written in the specialized literature. These names are the following: Sweta
Hunas or Khidaritas in Sanskrit, Ephtalites or Hephtalites
in Greek and in the European languages, Haitals in Armenian and
Heaitels
in Arabic and Persian. The Byzantine Theophylactos Simocattes
called them Abdeles, while according to the Chinese
annals the name of this people is Ye-ta-li-to because their ruler
was called Ye-tha (Hephtal). The earlier Indian sources called them
Chionites.

But these several names mean only one people: the White Huns.
In the specialized literature they are indicated as Hephtalites.
It was doubtful for a
long time if they were the same people
who originated from the neighbourhood of
China called Hsiung-nus, separated many times and finally
settled in the Oxus (Amu-darya) valley. At that
time they were already called Western Hunas in
Indian sources. From the northern Hsiung-nus originated
the Asian Huns — or the Black Huns — who moved first to the
Caucasus, later on to Europe and became a world power. They were the people
of Balamber — Munduk — Rua — Atilla — or the ancestors of the Hungarians.
The several archeological findings excavated
since the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries,
the Sanskrit literary and religious works from
the early centuries A.D.1 and last but not
least the accurate Chinese annals chronologically parallel
with the Indian sources prove that the greater
part of the White Huns consisted of the Western Hunas. The
famous Chinese Buddhist monks: — one of them: Sung Yun who visited
India at the time of the Hephtalite kingdom — and the other one: Hsuan
Tsang who went there a few decades later, gave details about the White
Huns in their accounts. But the Hephtalites had mixed with other nations
before they arrived in India.

The early appearance of the Hephtalites

The Western Hunas appeared in Transoxiana
— the grassland between the rivers
Oxus (Amu-darya) and Jaxartes (Sir-darya) — in the end
of the 3rd century A.D.2 At that time they did not
mix with other tribes. But because they had a strong army and
they were remarkably brave, they conquered
more and more territories southwards of
their dwellings. At the beginning of the
4th century A.D. they occupied Tokharistan
and Bactria (now North Afghanistan). The Greek
historian: Procopius distinguished them from Atilla’s
Huns who wandered towards the west and conquered
a great part of Europe.3 According
to him, their culture and appearance
were better than those of the Northern
Huns. Procopius wrote that the Hephtalites were
taller, more beautiful and their skin was fairer than those of the Asian
Huns. But we should mention that the colours written in the ancient
sources did not mean the skin colour. The Northern Huns were
the black ones because in their ancient history they had adopted
the names of colours in agreement with the four cardinal points. It was
customary among the Central Asian peoples. The “black” always means the
more severe northern region, the “white” means the western, the “green”
or “blue” means the southern, while the “red” means the eastern territories,
so the descriptions of colour are not connected with the people’s skin
colour at all.
The majority of researchers state
that the Chionites or in their other name: the
Hionos joined the White Huns already in Transoxiana.4,5
They were related to the Western Hunas. Other scholars suppose that the
White Huns are the descendants of the Kushans — or in their Persian name:
the “shanan-shahis” (the king of the kings) living in Bactria and
Gandhara (now North Pakistan) at that time.6,7
The Kushans were defeated by the Sassanians in 239 A.D. and became
their vassals but yet they had
relative independence. The Hephtalites confirmed the later opinion,
too, when mainly in the first period of their conquest they called
themselves “shahan-shahis” on their coins. They
used Greek script and the Bactrian dialect of
the Persian language.

They wanted to prove by their coins that they were
the successors of the Kushans and they rightly could
claim the occupied territories.
As a matter of fact the abovementioned scholars
are right. The main part of the White Huns consisted of the Western Hunas
separated from the Hsiung-nus. But the Chionites
and the Kushans of Bactria joined the newcomers:
the strong people of Central Asia. They
hoped that with the help of the
Hephtalites they could reconquer their East-Iranian
and North-North-western Indian territories. The Khidarites — who
also joined the White Huns — belonged to the later Kushans, too. From the
Sassanian rule a Ta Yüeh-chi (Great Yüeh-chi)
prince: Khidara and his tribe became independent in
the beginning of the 4th century A.D. and occupied the
eastern part of Gandhara. This fact is proved by the
Khidarita coins excavated there. But the pillar found in Allahabad,
India proves this, too, as the following text is written on it: „near to
the border of North India lives a prince called Devaputra Sahanushahi
(”son of God — the king of the kings”).8 As
this title always belonged to the Kushan rulers
originated from the Great Yüeh-chis, it means that Khidara was
their successor and the Khidarites were his nation. By the archeologists
the pillar was made around 340 A.D.,
so the Hephtalites and their “kindred
tribes”: the Kushans, the Chionites and the Khidarites
arrived to the Indian border at that time.

The Hephtelites in Persia

After occupying Bactria, the strong White Hun army
made its way towards Persia. The fact that a so called nomadic nation,
like the Hephtalites and their predecessors: the Kushans wanted to conquer
the settled, wealthy peoples of ancient culture was understandable from
their point of view. The nomadic nations were stock-breeders and agricultural
peoples in the Bronze Age according to the archeological
findings. But because of the climatic change
in Central Asia their cultivated fields became
steppe or even uncultivable deserts. At that time they adopted the nomadic,
pasturing way of life “with their intense adjustment to the enviromental
possibilities.”9 But these harsh circumstances made
them strong and brave warriors. As they possesed only the products coming
from the stock-breeding, and the exchange of these products did not cover
their needs, sometime they had to plunder the richer settled countries
surrounding Central Asia. For them the war was almost a profession of livelihood.
In the beginning they got hold of their booty or ransom from China but
the Chinese started to build their walls as a protection against them.
After that the nomads wandered towards the
west; a part of them occupied the Transcaucasian territories while
the others started to the south and the small oasis-states
of Fergana, Sogdiana and later Bactria, Gandhara; finally the
“fabulous India” became the target of their conquests. They were slowly
assimilated to the people of the occupied lands, the greater part of the
tribes even settled there because they did not want to go back to the steppe
or desert of severe climate.
It is clear from the archeological findings of the
Kushans and the Hephtalites that their kings supported nearly all the Asian
religions and adopted the customs, languages
and religions of the occupied countries.
We can find the symbols of the Zoroastrian,
Buddhist and Shaiva religions on their
coins; moreover the Greek deities in
the Bactrian findings, it was characteristic of
the late Greco-Bactrian period. We can see the script and language of the
conquered countries: on one side of the coin the king’s name and title
are written with Greek letters in Bactrian dialect of the Persian language,
while on the reverse with Kharosthi script in Prakrit or with Brahmi script
in Sanskrit. These facts prove their intense adaptability.
The wars fought with the Sassanians
in Persia actually started because of the
Sassanian king: Firoz. He denied the war booty or at
least a part of it from the Huns though
it was necessary for their living. The Hephtalites got
into contact with Yazdigird, the Sassanian king in 457 A.D. winning
many successful battles against him. After Yazdigird’s death, his son:
Firoz was the heir to the crown but his younger brother: Hormuzd
deposed him. At that time Firoz asked the Hephatiles’
help and together with them he defeated Hormuzd and his army.
The king of the White Huns was called Khushnewaz and he already ruled
Tokharistan, Badakshan and Bactria.10 Firoz — though
the chiefs of his army warned him — did not pay the agreed war ransom and
even started a war against the Hephtalites.11 He lost
the war and a part of his army was destroyed. The White Huns occupied the
important town: Gorgo at the Persian-Bactrian border. Firoz again attacked
the Hephtalites taking his sons with him; he left back only his youngest
son: Kubad. The Sassanians suffered a crushing defeat, Firoz and his sons
died in the battle.
The Sassanian Empire became the vassal of the Hephtalites for a short
time, they paid war ransom every year and they lost two important provinces:
Merv and Herat. After the Persian victory, the White Huns prepared for
a new conquest: towards India.

But before writing about
the wars in India, we should refer
to the sources mentioning the White Huns.
Besides the well-known European and West
Asian sources: e.g. Procopius, Theophylactos
Simocattes, Khoreni Moses, Jordanes, Ammianus Marcellinus,
Cosmas Indicopleustes, first of all the always correct Chinese annals and
the reports of two Buddhist monks: Sung Yun and Hsuan-tsang, the Arabian
Al-Beruni and the Persian Firdause help us to understand that era. But
because a significant part of the Hephtalite kingdom belonged to ancient
India, the Indian literary works, the religious scripts and the archeological
findings contributed to reveal their history. The research of the White
Huns in Hungary was insufficient because it did not take into consideration
the Indian sources.
The Hephtalites while still living in the Oxus valley
in the 4th century, the Indian Puranas — written in Sanskrit — first of
all the Vishnu Purana and the Aitareya Brahmana refer to them and call
them “Hunas”.12 In the beginning of the 5th century
the famous poet-writer: Kalidasa writes about them in his Sanskrit epic:
the Raghuvamsha (Raghu’s nation):

The abovementioned quotation means that
the Huns live in the Oxus valley, they were
created to practise power but the cheeks of their wives
blush when they hear the victory of Raghu: the hero.
The other important literary work is: Kalhana’s Rajatarangini
(The Chronicle of the Kings). The book of many volumes from
the Kashmirian historian was first translated from Sanskrit
into English by Aurel Stein in 1900 A.D.
The data in Kalhana’s work always should be
compared with other sources because the Kashmirian author dealt with
the historical facts and dates freely. But the
names of his books are real and if we
compare his dates with the correct Chinese sources and
the Sanskrit and Prakrit epitaphs, coins found at the archeological excavations,
we can get the exact data.
Apart from the abovementioned sources there is the
poem: Harshacarita (The deeds of Harsha), written by Bana, the court poet
of King Harsha (606-640 A.D.). In this poem Bana mentioned that the father
of the famous Indian king: Harsha defeated the Huns for good
in the beginning of the 7th century.14
We should mention that it was not true
because according to the Puranas the Huns ruled in India
for 300 years, though after 565 A.D. only in Kashmir and in a part of Punjab,
but still it was a large territory.
The other important and
frequently quoted work is a Jaina religious
book from Jaisalmer, Rajasthan It is
the
Kuvalayamala.15 Moreover the epitaphs found
on pillars, temple ruins and buildings of that period can help us
to identify the names of the rulers, the date of their reign, their
wars and victories or defeats. We shall refer to the sources in the proper
places of this essay.

The Hephtalites in India

The noted Indian scholar: professor Modi remarked:
“The Huns always headed for India; whether they were victorious
or were defeated, — in the first case they felt their power and in the
second case they wanted new grazing grounds and booty.”16
Modi’s statement is supported
by the Indian sources; according to
them the first Hun attack against India
took place in 455 A.D. in the Punjab — now in the
territory of Pakistan — but at that time the Indian
king: Skandagupa defeated them.17
This fact was recorded on the pillar of victory set up in Bhitari:

“Skanda Gupta of great glory by his own power, the
abode of kingly qualities who when his father had attained the position
of being a friend of the gods (that means, he had died — E.A.) — whose
fame, even with his enemies: in the counties of the Mlecchas
(slaves, strangers — E.A.) ….. having their pride broken down
to the root, announces: verily the victory has been achieved
by him.”18

The word: Mlecchas or the strangers of under caste
naturally meant the attacking Huns. So, at that time the Indian army was
victorious. The same epitaph was written on a
stone-pillar in Western India: in Junagadh.
Junagadh is situated in Gujarat province near to Kathiawar;
this place was Skandagupta’s head quarter and he wanted to announce his
victory there, too. The abovementioned Bhitari is in Punjab.
The latest researches and the
excavations in north-western part of Pakistan — where some Hephtalite
coins and epitaphs were found — prove that not Toramana
(in his original Hun name: Turman) was the first major Hun
ruler in India. On the coins the names: Tunjina
or Tujina are written in Brahmi script and on
the reverse of the coins his titles: tigin
or tegin are given, too. It seems that the dual power was well-known
by the White Huns as Tunjina was war lord and ruler while the seat of the
kagan was near to Bokhara in the north; this fact we know from the Persian
sources. The title “tegin” existed already at the time of the White Huns
proved by their coins. It is not true that this title appeared only later
with the Khazars and the Avars.
Otherwise the name Tunjina
was mentioned in Kalhana’s Rajatarangini
as the first Hun ruler who entered
India and invaded Kashmir. As we mentioned before, Kalhana’s work
should be treated cautiously because he has written it in the 12th century
A.D. and though he referred to authentic historians, it is based on traditions
and legends first of all. The names of the historical persons and
the stories belonging to them are real but the chronology is uncertain.
His data should be compared with other sources. But from these other
sources the fact is proved that the father
of Toramana and the founder of the conquering dynasty was Tunjina.19
He was ruling from 465 till 484 A.D., so the first Hun campaign in
455 A.D. was not commanded by him. This battle finished with Hun
defeat. But in 475 A.D. Tunjina quickly and successfully entered
India with his army and occupied the Punjab and even the northern part
of the Ganges basin. In 484 A.D. his son: Toramana, the energetic and talented
tegin
— war lord — became the leader of the Hephtalites.

Toramana

First of all we should mention the Indian epigraphs
proving Toramana’s reign and his conquests. We know three such stone inscriptions:
1) The Eran statue inscription. Eran was
in the northern part of the province: Madhya Pradesh, so almost in India’center.
It seems that the Hephtalite ruler already conquered Northern and Western
India. The statue most probably stood before a temple built for Vishnu
and the following text is written in Brahmi script on its pedestal:

“In the first year of the rule of Maharajadhiraja
(the king of kings): Shri Toramana who is governing the earth with great
fame and lustre.”20

2) The inscription of the Kura main pillar.
Kura is a town situated in Northern Punjab — today it belongs to Pakistan.
The following text is written on the stone pillar in Brahmi script:

“This is engraved during the reign of Maharajadhiraja Shri Toramana,
the great Saha Javlah.”21

There is no date on the inscription but we are sure
that it was made in the last quarter of the 5th
century. The title: “king of the kings” — in Sanskrit: Maharajadhiraja
— is engraved on both the stone epigraphs but on the Kura pillar the title:
Saha can be seen, too, because it indicated that he and the
Hephtalites are the rightful descendants of the Kushans as the Kushan
kings had used this name. Though Toramana kept his own Hun
identity to some extent, as the word
“Javla” appears on the pillar inscription. The researchers
give different interpretations of this word. On the one hand it means
the birthplace of Toramana: the city being their head-quarter
since the Persian and Gandharian wars, namely Kabul.
They called this city on their own
language Jaula, Javlah, Zabula or Zabola, these names can be found
on their different coins. So the title Saha Javlah means: “the
ruler from Kabul”. But the words: “Javlah, Juvl” mean “falcon” in
the old Turkish language;22 this could have been
the sacred bird of the White Huns as the turul is that of the Hungarians.
Otherwise if the words Javlah, Zabula, Zabola meant the name of the
city, we should mention that these words are also of Turkish
origin. In the eastern part of Iran — near to the Afghan border —
there is a town called Zabola — and in Transylvania, too we know the place
Zabola.

3) The Gwalior inscription. Toramana is mentioned on it, too,
but the inscription was made during the reign of his son and
successor: Mihirakula, most probably in 530 A.D. It was engraved
on a temple post built for the worship of the Sun God and Shiva.
Gwalior is a town in the center of India.
After mentioning the usual laudatory titles,
the epigraph informs us about the exact date of its erection which was
the 15th year of Mihirakula’s reign. It means that Mihirakula ruled sice
515 A.D. and his father: Toramana between 484-515 A.D. The text of the
inscription follows:

“Of him, the fame of whose family has rosen high,
the son of Toramana, the Lord of the Earth, who is renowned under the
name Mihirakula who unbrokenly worships Pasupati”.23

Pasupati is one of Shiva’s different
names. It appears from the epigraph that both Mihirakula and Toraman
were the followers of Shiva.
Besides these three inscriptions numerous coins
give evidence about the first really important Hun ruler who — according
to the archeological findspots — occupied Bactria, Eastern Iran, Gandhara,
Kashmir, Norhern and North-Western India , as far as the Ganges plain,
Rajasthan on the West and Madhya Pradesh (Middle Province)
in the center of India. It means that he ruled
almost half part of India. During his long reign he won
many successful conquering wars. The Toramana coins were current
even in the 18th century in the Kashmirian bazars. On his coins the names
“Sahi Zabula” or “Sahi Jauvla” are written and on the reverse side either
Shiva and his carrying animal: the Nandi bull, or the symbol of
the Sun God: the Sun-wheel are visible. Obviously the worship of the Sun
God was their original nature-religion. But as one of the best Indian Hun
researcher: Atreyi Biswas noted in her book: “It is
a remarkable feature of the Central Asian
invaders that wherever they went, they adopted the
local customs, beliefs and traditions, even
the languages and changed themselves according
to their new environments. This strong quality of assimilation
persisted when they entered India.”24

Besides the stone inscriptions and coins, Buddhist
religious books, the already mentioned Jaina
Kuvalayamala and
Kalhana’s Rajatarangini inform us about the White Hun king. From
these sources — though not always authentically — we may get some data
about Toramana: the war lord and the man. He occupied almost half of India’s
territory in the first year of his reign: in 484 A.D., as the Gupta empire
became waek by that time and the smaller Indian principalities were fighting
with each other. We can conclude on the
basis of the abovementioned works that
„Toramana was a remarkable and talented personality whose
achievements in India were no less great than those of Alexander. He was
the first foreign ruler in India who built up a vast empire from
Central Asia to Central India. He was a born fighter
who with his well-organized army gave the Hunas a stable home for more
than hundred years, a better one than their original home in Inner Mongolia.

After Atilla, he was the only general who re-organized the Hunas, under
his inspiring leadership to a nation-reborn after many failures”.25
He
was not only a great conqueror but a good organizer and administrator,
too. Indeed, he developed his own state organization: Kabul and Purushapura
(near to Peshawar, today in Pakistan) became his headquarters in the North
and the territory of Malwa ant its towns were his center
in the South. Malwa had been also the
main place of the Indo-Scythians and
the Kushans. Malwa included the states of today’s Rajasthan and western
Madhya Pradesh. He appointed Indian princes to important posts ensuring
their loyalty. He had patience with the three religions: the Buddhism,
the Hinduism and the Jainism and even supported them. He did not change
the administration, he did not trouble anybody needlessly, there was a
relative consolidation in the country therefore the people accepted him.
After a long reign Toramana died in Benares
in 515 A.D. Before his death he declared his son: Mihirakula his successor.
But the crown prince did not inherit his father’s patience and straightforwardness.

23 The translation from the
original Sanskrit text made by Indian scholars
in the 20th century and it became an authentic
text; I could not change it.
24 Atreyi Biswas: “The Political History of the
Hunas in India”, Munshiram Manoharlal Pbl. 1971. p. 59.
25 Upendra Thakur: “The Hunas in India”, Varanasi,
1967. Chowkhamba Sanskrit Office pp. 95, 107.
26 Aurel Stein: “Ázsia halott szívében”
(In the dead heart of Asia), Bp. 1985, Helikon, p.368.

Mihirakula

He was a great conqueror but a short-tempered man
with contradictory character; he ruled from 515 till 533 in the greater
part of India, according to the sources, and after two fateful battles
he ruled only in Kashmir for some time. His name appears on the epigraph
found in Uruzgan, Afghanistan, as Mihiragula26. It
must have been his original Hun name and its second part:
gula shows the magyar Gyula’s name and royal profession,
as he was a tegin and had the same duty than that of the later “gyulas”:
a ruling war lord.
The inscriptions about Mihirakula are the following:
1) The Gwalior inscription made in 530 A.D. We have
mentioned it before, in connection with Toramana.
2) The Mandasor inscription,27
its date is most probably 533 A.D. It appears only
three years after the abovementioned epigraph
and it informs us — in contrast with
the announcement of Mihirakula’s victory
in Gwalior — his defeat by Yasodharman, a tribal
prince.
The text follows:

“To the glory of Yasodharman who occupied the Earth
from the river Lauhitya (Brahmaputra) up to the western ocean and from
the Himalaya up to the mount of Mahendra, forced the famous Huna king:
Mihirakula to bend down his forehead by the strength of Yasodharman’s arm.
Mihirakula’s head had never previously been brought into humility of obedience
to any other save the God Sthanu.”

Sthanu is Shiva’s other name, it is proved from the
abovementioned text, too, that Mihirakula was a great devotee of Lord Shiva.
But the inscription glorifying Yasodharman is exaggerating
— as it was the custom of that time — because according to the Indian scholars,
he was only a tribal prince in a part of today’s Gujarat and most probably
he could not rule a great territory of India, up to the river Brahmaputra.
In the eastern part of the country the already re-established Gupta Empire
existed.
As we have mentioned before,
the Mihirakula coins were found first
of all in Bactria, the territory of
the present Afghanistan, but also in Kashmir and
in India’s different parts. On one of the coins
found in Uruzgan, the next inscription appears, most
probably on their own language:
“Boggo saho zovolovo Mihroziki”, in translation:
“To the glorious king, Mihirakula of Zabul”.
On one side of his silver coins
the king’s half-length portrait can be seen with a writing
in Persian language and on the reverse the Sun-disk and
the Moon crescent, sometimes the fire-altar symbolizing the Mazda religion,
on another occasion the bow and arrow or the symbol of Shiva: the trident
appear.
The literary sources about the Hephtalites
are: the abovementioned Rajatarangini and Kuvalayamala and
the memories of the famous Chinese monk: Huan-Tsang who went to
India two generations later. His accounts based on legends and are
exaggerating to some extent. Mihirakulas’s contemporary, the Chinese pilgrim:
Sung Yun gives information about the Hun king, and
though he does not draw a positive
picture of him, his accounts are free
from prejudices. Sung Yun arrived to Kashmir in
about 520 A.D. and brought a letter from his master,
the Chinese emperor to the Hephtalite king. Aurel
Stein’s account about the story in the
court of Kashmir follows: “The pious
pilgrim mentions as the sign of the
king’s barbarous arrogance and self-conceit that
he heard the Chinese emperor’s letter
of recommendation sitting, while the other
princes received the message of the Son of Heaven, the great emperor Vui
with full honours, standing.”28 The Chinese author
added to his accounts: “Kashmir stays under the power of a barbarous people.”
We have to admit that the Rajatarangini
is more just to Mihirakula in this case,
because according to Kalhana, the king answered
the offended pilgrim: “if the emperor would have come here personally
I naturally received him standing but why should I pay respect for
a piece of paper.” This answer shows Mihirakula’s sense of humour, too,
but there is no doubt that he was an arrogant and cruel ruler according
to all sources.
But he was an excellent military leader. He inherited
from his father a vast country and he extended it with his campaigns to
the South, as far as Indore — which is in the center of India, —
but the whole subcontinent, even the southern provinces became his
vassals. A Greek sailor-missionary called Cosmas Indicopleustes
who travelled to India in 530 A.D. gave an account about this
fact in his book: Christiana Topographia. He wrote the following:
“India is ruled by the White Huns with the leadership of king Gollas
who goes to war with 2000 elephants and with a large cavalry. The
whole country is under his command and he takes ransom from far regions.”
According to Stein the name: Gollas contains the second part of Mihirakula’s
name /in the case of Greek authors we should leave the word-ending „s”/
and in this way we can get the word: gula.29

According to the Rajatarangini he persecuted
the Buddhist monks but he was the follower of Hinduism,
first of all the Shaiva line of it.30
He was a brave and strong warrior
but fanatically kept his power. Though
he built a temple called Mihireshwar in Kashmir, near
Shrinagar for the worship of Shiva and the Sun God.
Otherwise he was a simple person, he lived in tent
among his soldiers; he was constantly fighting to keep the occupied huge
territories.
According to the Mandasor inscription, as we mentioned
before, Mihirakula was defeated in 533 A.D. by Yasodharman, the tribal
prince from Western India. At that time he wanted to ensure his power in
the eastern part of his empire. But there, in the surroundings of
Pataliputra /the present Patna, capital of
Bihar state/ he and his army suffered
a crushing defeat from Baladitya, the king of the eastern province.
Baladitya, the vassal of Mihirakula did not want to pay the ransom to the
Huns any longer. The Hun emperor became very angry and started with his
army to punish the eastern king. But in the marshland near the Bengal
Bay Mihirakula lost many soldiers while his enemy and
his troop knew well their native terrain. Baladitya,
as a devout Buddhist did not kill his enemy. The Hun emperor withdrew to
Kashmir after the defeat because he came to know that his younger brother
occupied Shakala, his northern capital. The prince of Kashmir gave
him an asylum but Mihirakula overthrew the prince with intrigues and he
sat on the throne. He could not enjoy his power for a long time, as he
died of disease in 533 A.D.31 One of his successors
was defeated in 558 A.D. by the Sassanian king: Kushrew Anushirwan
and at the same time by the Turkish army in the North. The headquarters
of the kagan — near Bokhara — surrendered in 565 A.D.
The opinions of the Indian
scholars are divided about Mihirakula, the
great conqueror but the enemy of Buddhism.
U. Thakur writes the following about him: “while his father gave a new
country to the Hunas and was accepted by the Indians, Mihirakula
made the Huna name dreaded and hated
in India. The result was that after
a hundred years power the great Hephtalite
empire ended and a talented people had to fly from India.”32
At the same time the other Hun researcher, Mrs.Atreyi Biswas pointed out
that the Buddhist accounts are always one-sided and exaggerated and the
actions of Mihirakula were not so cruel as stated by the Rajatarangini
and the two Chinese monks.33

The traditions and the often mentioned Rajatarangini
are informing us that the rule of the Hephtalites did not end with Mihirakula’s
death, only this rule did not extend to the whole country, not even to
the larger part of it. The books of the most reliable Indian
historiography are the Puranas and according
to them the Huns ruled 300 years
altogether, first of all in Kashmir and in the
greater part of the Punjab and they had eleven rulers including Tunjina,
Toramana and Mihirakula.34 As the book Rajatarangini
always should be compared with other sources, in this case, with
the excavated coins and inscriptions, we may state the following
with almost full certainty: after Mihirakula’s death his youngest
brother (half-brother): Pravarasena, after his son: Gokarna, the latter’s
son: Khinkhila and his son: Yudhishthira, finally his grandson: Lakhana
ruled the northern part of India. They sat on the throne altogether till
670 A.D. — for 200 years instead of 300 years mentioned in the Puranas
— as they had their first victory in 475 A.D. But
the Puranas had the informations justified by the
archeological findings that isolated „Huna Mandalas” — Hun
centers — existed even in the 10th century both in Rajasthan and in the
North. The account of Hsuan-Tsang also confirms the abovementioned statements
of the Puranas.
When he travelled towards Nalanda in 633 A.D., he
wrote about Kashmir and its people that „fierce and wild people live in
this land, they are uncivilized and
their language is different from the Indian
languages, it sounds more roughly. They are borderland
people with barbarous customs.”35 His account is one-sided
as he added: “the people are non-Buddhist”.

Pravarasena

He was Toramana’s youngest son who was
a young child when his father died in 515 A.D.
We should mention that the poligamy was customary
at the rulers both in Central Asia
and ancient India. For instance in
the Hsiung-nu history we remember the case of Maotun
shanyu who was the crown prince but his father wanted to get him killed
because he wished to put his younger son on the throne. This fact was revenged
by Maotun when he killed his father and stepbrother. But Rama, the hero
of Ramayana also had to go into exile, because his father had promised
his younger wife that her son would be the crown-prince. In case of Pravarasena
the situation was different. His half-brother, the powerful Mihirakula
would not let him near to the throne. According to the
Rajatarangini, after Toramana’s death Pravarasena was
hidden by his mother and uncle in a
potter’s house, then later he went to a northern country
and lived there as a pilgrim. We should mention
that Pravarasena’s name is entirely Indian, not similarly to
the names of his father and grandfather. Pravarasena went back to Kashmir
from the North after Mihirakula’s death and ascended
the Kashmirian throne. According to the Rajatarangini
this fact happened in 533 A.D. but some Indian
scholars dispute this date because after Mihirakula’s death
a prince from other dynasty ruled the country for some years. It
seems that Pravarasena’s ruling started in 537 A.D. He was about 25 years
old at that time.

According to Kalhana he reigned
for 60 years, which means till 597 A.D. This
is justified by the inscriptions and
the glorifying books of the court poets of the Indian kings having connected
to Pravarasena — either as his allies or as his enemies.
He helped with his army Siladitya, the
prince of Malwa in Saurashtra (in the present Gujarat)
to save the latter’s throne against Prabhakaravardhana,
the king of Thanesar.36
It means that he was a powerful and influental ruler.
Due to the Indian researchers, Pravarasena later lost an important
battle against Prabhakaravardhana still in the western part of
India, this fact was mentioned by Bana, the court
poet of king Harsha from Thanesar. Bana writes the following in his glorifying
book “Harshacarita” (The actions of Harsha):

“Vardhana was a lion to the Huna deer,
the axe cutting the creeping-plant of Malwa’s glory.”37

The battle happened in 587 A.D. and Vardhana was
Harsha’s father. Malwa — the present Rajasthan — meant always the center
of the Huns, before them, the center of the Kushans, it was the headquarters
of both nations. The “Huna deer” term is interesting because the
deer was most probably their sacred animal, the symbol of the Hephtalites,
— besides the falcon: “Juvl” — as it was also a symbol of the
Magyars
(Hungarians).
In the excavated Hun graves in Mongolia the pictures of deers
are visible on the fairly unbroken carpets.
The abovementioned battle did not change the fact
that according to the Rajatarangini and to the accounts of Hsuan-Tsang,
the country of Pravarasena included Kashmir, the north-western part of
the Punjab, the Swat-basin, the southern part of Bactria and Gandhara.
It was a large territory.The places
where their coins were found prove
that the headquarters of the late Haphtalites were the
same as those of their ancestors, that means: Bactria, Kabul and the valley
of the river Kabul.
The Rajatarangini mentions that Pravarasena had
a major town, called Paravarasenapura built near to the present Shrinagar,
the capital of Kashmir. Here the Huns built a bridge, too.38
Pravarasena had his own coins and on these
— as it was usual on the Hephtalite’s coins — the
word “Kidara” appeared next to the ruler’s name. They wanted to show
their ancient Kushan-Kidarita origin or relationship and the fact
that they rule the occupied territories rightfully.39
According to Kalhana, Pravarasena, though he was
the half-brother of Mihirakula, — contrary to his predecessor — was a kind
and wise ruler, who was accepted by his subjets during his long reign.
Among the Hun rulers in Kashmir, mentioned in the
Puranas, Pravarasena was followed by his son: Gokarna, who ruled for a
short time. Some of his coins were found in North India.40
His son Khinkhila dedicated a temple for Shiva in Kashmir and
ruled for 36 years, stated by the Rajatarangini. The statement was proved
by the excavations done in Afghanistan in the second half of the
last century, when the archeologists found a Ganesha statue
in Gardez, in the Swat-basin, south to Kabul. On the foundation
stone of the statue a few lines were engraved in North-Indian Brahmi script,
most probably in the middle of the 7th century. The inscriptions
were engraved for “Maharajadiraja Sahi Khingala”, who
was identified with the abovementioned Khinkhila by the scholars.41
So, it means, the Rajatarangini was right, only the date was not correct,
Khinkhila ruled between 600-633 A.D., presumably, and
his reign in Kashmir coincided with
the Indian journey of Hsuan-Tsang who stopped
in Kashmir and wrote that its ruler was not Buddhist and descended from
a lower caste.42 This description from
Hsuan-Tsang’s point of view was fitting to Khinkhila, who, as a foreigner,
was not considered by the Indians as a person belonging to higher castes.
And indeed he was not a Buddhist but a Shaiva.

When Hsuan-Tsang, after his long Indian stay, returned
home stopped again in Kashmir and at that time Khinkhila’s son: Judhishthira
sat on the throne. The Chinese monk wrote about him highly. According
to the Rajatarangini Judhishthira ruled for 24 years, from 633 till
557 A.D. Judhishthira’s son: Lakhana, whose coins were also found, ruled
for 13 years in Kashmir.43
The name and date of reign of the other Hun kings
— mentioned in the Puranas — are not provable. At that time, from 670 A.D.
another dynasy came to power in Kashmir

The successors of the Hephtalites in India

After glancing over the data of the reigning princes
ruling in the northern part of India, let us see what happened to them
in the western and central parts of the subcontinent. As it was mentioned,
some Hun states were established in several places of Indian territory,
after their defeat. They were the so called Huna Mandalas — Hun centers
— still representing a considerable power. Previously Malwa was their main
center, including the present states of Rajasthan, East Gujarat and the
western part of Madhya Pradesh. Here the Huns remained
for a long time. This fact is known
from the “victory pillars” established by the Indian
kings. According to these the Huns had to be defeated even in 900 A.D.
This is proved by the Garuda pillar from 850 A.D. It states that that the
Pala king ruled in the central part of India “defeated the Hunas, the Gurjars
and the Dravidiens in the eastern and the western parts of the country,”
where they had some centers, too, besides of Malwa and Kashmir. This was
the Uttarapatha province, north from Kanauj, so they still represented
a considerable power.44
It is interesting, that the Dravidiens were fighting
together with the Kushans and later on with the Hephtalites, as they have
never forgotten — even today — the well-known fact
that the Arians had defeated them several thousand years
before. The existing Hun centers are proved by the Gaonri epitaph
in 955 A.D. found in Vanika village near to Indore. Besides
this it is well known that the Hun princesses were married some Rajasthani
rulers and even other Indian princes, too, e.g. in 977 A.D.
the Medapata ruler Allata married Hariyadevi, the daughter of a “Huna Mandala”
king, proved by the Atpru Inscription. The princess established a town
in Mewar — today the eastern part of Rajasthan — where several Hun villages
are still existing in the following names: Hunavasa, Hunaganva Hunajunmu,
Madarya, Kemri. Similarly written documents are showing that
the Chalukiya ruler Hemachandra in 1009 had to fight with a Hun prince
for a princess in a marriage-contest. The Hun prince was his rival. In
1072 the Khaira tablets prove that the Kalachuri clan’s queen was a Hun
ruler’s daughter. In 1153 the Inscription of Ajmer proves that in Ajmer
a Hun royal family was ruling.45 So it shows that
the Huns were present in a huge part of India. This is due to the fact
that “in the veins of three prominent ethnic groups: the Rajputs, the Gurjars
and the Jats Hun blood are flowing in substential quantity.”46
The Huns remained in India
for several hundred years, settled down
there and became Indians. Some leading tribes
of Rajasthan originated from the ruling part of the Huns and even several
other provinces were ruled by them. The Gurjars arrived with the
Hephtalites in the fifth century, they were
shepherds, but actually they supplied the
foodstaff for the Hun army. In India they also became
shepherds and the Ind society accepted them as Kshatriyas — the second
caste — and in this way they are called “the royal shepherds”. The Jat
tribe originated by the interbreeding of the Hun soldiers and the local
population and later on they made the famous, brave
fighters: the Sikhs. How did the despised mlecchas (foreigners,
under-caste) change to second caste citizens? The Brahmins played
a very important role in the Indian society and by the end
of the 7th century they realized that the brave Hun soldiers
adopted the Indian customs and religion —
first of all the Shaivism — and through the interbreeding
with the wise Arians, they became useful for the Indian
society. For this reason at the end of the 7th century in Mount
Abu — at that time it was called Arbuda — the Rajput clan undertook themself
for the so called “ordeal by fire”; the Brahmins were present
on the test. Later they spread the news that a mythological bird raised
up from the fire and this bird took the ancestor of the Rajputs to the
plain, so they were purified from their foreign origin and they became
second caste members of the society, in this way they could be elected
as kings. This is naturally a nice story of the Brahmins but it shows that
even they accepted them and legalized the one-time enemy’s descendants.
It was a custom in India that the foreign conquerors
after some time were assimilated into the Ind society but always to the
caste according to their professions. For instance only one foreign tribe
members became Brahmins: the so called magas came from Iran, or from
other sources the magars who had arrived together with Mihirakula as the
priests of the Sun God and the Sun worship.47

After this the Rajputs were fighting bravely in the
middle age against the Muslim conquerors who had never succeeded to occupy
the whole Rajasthan, as from the fortified castles the mobile
defender troops rode here and there and by the
time the Muslims occupied one castle, they moved to another one.
Apart from the Rajput soldiers, the Rajput women
were showing an example of ideal moral and heroism. If the Muslims
occupied a fort finally — e.g. the fort of Chittor, the
previous capital of Mewar, — the queen called Padmini had committed
suicide on a large pyre with her court
members before the enemy entered the
fort. Even today Rajasthan state is the most interesting,
most colourful part of India, culturally too, and it is curious that
the people do not have any Arian features. Their clothes also preserve
the tradition of the Central Asian pattern: the men wear tight trousers,
white shirts with loose sleeves and dark coloured waistcoats — similarly
to the Chango (today in Romania, an old Hungarian tribe) and the Szekler
national dress. The only difference is that the Rajasthani
men wear turbans but this fact is due to
the hot climate. Their folk art and music expressivly
show the Central Asian origin. On the wall near to the Maharana’s palace
gate in Udaipur — the present capital of Mewar — a huge painting is visible:
a Rajput warrior on horseback, with the stirrup, which is a Hun invention.
But the whole decoration in the palace: the peacock, the tree of life and
the palmettas are familiar to us. When the Maharana (this title means that
he is the spiritual leader of all Rajput maharajas — and it
corresponds to the ancient name: maharajadiraja) succeeds to the
throne, he makes a compact sealed with blood with his old
ally, the headman of the Bhil tribe, then makes
a deep bow towards East and rides on horseback
through the eastern gate to their ancient,
sacred temple: Eklingji where the priests
consecrate him. Their ancient goddess is Mataji and their god is Suriya,
the Sun God. So many relationships!
In a short study it is impossible to analyze all
similarities; they are presented in details in my book published in 2005.
But now let us see what happened to those groups
of the Hephtalites who did not want to assimilate into the Indian society
or did not rule in Kashmir but went further north to Bactria and towards
their old native land in the Oxus-valley. Their previous enemy: the Sassanians
did not forget their defeat and after winning a battle against the Parthus
army, the started a war against the Hephtalites in Bactria and in the Bokhara
area. In 565 they defeated the Hephtalites. In the meantime the former
vassals of the Hephtalites: the Turks became strong in the Oxus-valley
and in Tokharistan, and they wanted to revenge upon
their one-time masters. They won a battle against the Hephtalites and now
they wanted to put the White Huns in a vassal status claiming ransom from
them. The kagan, the armed forces and the leaders naturally were forced
to fly. They were joined by a part of the Zhuan-Zhuan tribe; they
also had to escape from the Turk army. Though they were the opponents of
the Hsiung-nus in old time but in 565 A.D. the common fate forced them
together. Among these tribes there were the so called Uar-Huns,
or according to other sources: the Var-Huns who were called Avars
later on. The Indian sources mention that in the Caucasus they were joined
by some other Avar tribes settled down
there earlier. Some Indian scholars state
that these tribes must have been the descendants
of Atilla.48
In any case, the Hephtalite army with the joined peoples marched
towards Byzantium at a great speed pushed from the back
by the Turks. In 568 A.D. the Byzantine sources write about
them, mentioning the name of their commander, as Bayan kagan. The
history of the Avars in the Charpatian-basin is well known. I dealt
with the history of the White Huns first of all because they are
our ancestors through the Avars. Really, we are the descendants of the
Huns by two direct lines — this is my firm belief.
http://hunsarecoming.110mb.com/histwhitehuns.html